Before discussing the value of sub-branding, it’s important to understand an organization’s brand architecture – the structure of brands within a company or organization. This is the way in which the brands within a company’s portfolio are related to, and differentiated from, one another. The architecture should define how the corporate brand and sub-brands relate to and support each other and how the sub-brands reflect or reinforce the corporate brand to which they belong.

Generally, there are three defined levels of branding:

• Corporate brand– Examples of corporate brands include Nike and Dell. These are brands used across all the company’s activities, and the brand name is how they are known to customers, employees, shareholders, partners, suppliers, etc. These brands may also be used in conjunction with product descriptions or sub-brands, e.g. Nike Air or Dell Inspiron.
• Endorsed brands and sub-brands – For example, Residence Inn by Marriott, Sony PlayStation or Apple iPhone. These brands include a parent brand as an endorsement to a sub-brand or product brand. The endorsement is intended to add credibility to the endorsed sub-brand in the eyes of the market.
• Individual product brands – For example, Procter & Gamble’s Gillette or Coca Cola’s Sprite. The individual brands are presented to consumers, and the corporate name is given little or no visibility.

Let’s focus on sub-branding. A sub-brand is a brand that distinguishes a part of the product line within the brand system. For example, Ford uses the sub-brand Focus to distinguish a specific model from another model, such as the Mustang. Both are Fords, and both enjoy the equity of the Ford name, but each is a distinct product and is marketed as such.

One of the advantages of implementing a sub-branding strategy is the mutually beneficial nature of strong corporate and sub-brands. Successful sub-brands can help build positive perception and increase exposure for the parent brand and establish brand loyalty and trust. Likewise, customers who trust a corporate brand are more likely to try a new product under that main brand. Take, for example, Apple or Amazon. Anytime the companies debut a new product or service, they capitalize on the goodwill of their corporate brands, which creates trust in these new products or services.

When considering a sub-branding strategy, it’s important that the sub-brand is consistent with and supports the company’s brand identity. It should also somehow add value by better describing offerings, distinguishing offerings, augmenting the brand identity or exploiting market opportunities.

The advantages of sub-branding can also be disadvantages. When a sub-brand is unsuccessful, the failure can negatively impact the parent brand and affect loyalty, trust and business. Bad customer experiences can also create poor perceptions of the sub-brand and parent brand’s image. Sub-brands can also create confusion in the eyes of customers instead of clarifying and distinguishing brands. This can take away attention from a strong corporate brand.

One of the biggest issues we see with sub-branding is the lack of investment that companies make in supporting that brand. Building and maintaining a sub-brand requires additional budget to market and promote. Sometimes that means taking investment and attention from the corporate brand, which can weaken both brands. A sub-brand should be cost-justified in that it requires little investment to establish or the sub-brand business is large enough to provide resources needed for its own development.

The decision on whether or not to pursue a sub-branding strategy is unique to the company and its objectives and desired outcomes. There is a strong case to be made when sub-branding can serve companies well when the right combination of variables exists and vice versa. The key to the decision should be anchored in the business objectives of the company and thoughtful consideration based on the pros and cons.

Contributed articles are often written by experts within a company versus the publication’s writers and can cover many different topics including current industry news, growth potential and new or future strategies.

While each industry and trade publication have different requirements, there are a few things to keep in mind when trying to make your news interesting to editors:

1. Research – First and foremost, do your research. Understand what your company has to offer from a writing standpoint and make a list of publications you want to reach out to for particular topics. If your company has specific vertical markets you want to focus on, create separate lists for each market. Additionally, when doing research and creating these lists, make sure you have the right contact for each publication and limit your contacts to no more than two individuals per publication to avoid confusion and prevent oversaturating the publication. Creating an editorial calendar for pitching that includes contact names, publication information and upcoming topics is a great way to keep track of pitching deadlines and opportunities.

2. Know the publication’s audience – Whether the publication is new to your editorial calendar or one you reach out to often, understanding the publication’s audience is vital to creating content. You wouldn’t want to submit an article with a focus on topics or areas of interest in Europe or the Asia-Pacific region to a publication whose audience is primarily based in the United States.

3. Provide original content – When it comes to contributed articles, always submit original content. This doesn’t just mean to avoid plagiarizing from other sources (DUH), but not to submit the same content to multiple publications, even if your company created the content originally. Publications want unique and interesting information.

4. Secure the placement before writing – Always get verbal or written approval on a topic or abstract from the publication before spending time researching and writing an article. There is nothing worse than spending a good amount of time perfecting a piece only for your contact to tell you the publication doesn’t have room or that your piece doesn’t fit within a chosen theme.

5. Avoid overly promotional phrasing – This is not an ad. I REPEAT. THIS IS NOT AN AD… When writing an article, try not to sound overly promotional. Depending on the guidelines of the piece, you can still include your company’s name and a product, as long as it doesn’t sound like you are trying too hard. It’s best to speak to the industry as a whole.

6. Write about what you know – If you are writing an article, more often than not, it’s because you are the subject matter expert. Don’t try to overcompensate. Instead, write about what you know. You can include your opinion on trends and industry growth but avoid speaking about areas where your knowledge is limited.

7. Know your deadline and stick to it – Reporters and editors often have strict material deadlines for a reason. A lot goes into producing a print publication, including laying out what the article or piece will look like visually and sending the full publication to print with enough time for distribution. Ask for deadlines at the beginning of a project and stick to them once you have committed, but don’t risk quality for speediness. If a deadline isn’t feasible, make it known. Some editors can provide extensions, while others may suggest pushing the article to a future issue.

8. Respond quickly – The job isn’t quite done when you hit send on the email to your contact with the attached article copy. Many contacts will follow up with questions, image requests or to have you proof the article before it goes to print. Because their deadlines are often tight, responding quickly will help you solidify your relationship.

9. Develop a repertoire with your contacts – Developing a relationship with your contacts can help with future article requests and even interviews. If they know you are reliable and supply high-quality content, they are more likely to request or approve additional articles.

10. It’s okay to hear “no” – Finally, while not ideal, don’t be discouraged when your request is denied, especially if it is from a trusted contact. Whether it just wasn’t the right fit for the publication at the time or there simply isn’t room in the issue, a rejection isn’t the end-all be-all. Not all topics and requests will pan out, but that makes the ones that do worth it.

As Jack Canfield once said, “don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”

If you need help securing and writing contributed articles, pitching opportunities or simply want to learn more about what we can do for you, give us a call!

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

Are you worried about competitors or upstarts nibbling at pieces of your business, or worse? Are you looking for new areas of growth or new product opportunities?

Many clients come to Mod Op Strategic Consulting because they are looking to redefine their product or service, expand their place in their market, fend off competition, or find entirely new markets to capture. We use a proven, thorough methodology in our market assessments based on our principles of outside-in thinking and incremental progress toward broader strategic goals. Here are five questions we consider:

1. MAPPING THE MARKET – Who serves your customers? 

Every Mod Op Strategic Consulting market assessment starts with a mapping exercise that puts your customers at the center of the market ecosystem, and then identifies the major types of businesses or organizations that enable, serve or supply them.

In the case of a non-profit association for example, we would place their members (the “customers”) in the center. Surrounding these members are the professional or trade groups, technology vendors, data providers, business services, media, content and event producers, workforce and career development companies, and other significant suppliers to the industry all competing to serve them. Mapping out the “universe” of service providers that enable an industry, market, supply chain or a specific professional group in this way provides you with a baseline for all your opportunity assessments. One thing to remember is that many organizations can and do serve several different customer types, so a complete assessment framework may require designing multiple maps to visualize the entire market in which you operate and compete.

2. CURRENT MARKET POSITION – Where do you play?

Next, we look at where and how you currently serve your customers: In which sectors of the mapped ecosystem do you play in now and with what products and services? You may find you are concentrated in just one or are playing thinly across many of the industry service and supply opportunities. Oftentimes when our client sees this universe laid out with their current product suite it sparks new and interesting conversations about why they are strong in one vertical or how they could take what they are doing for one set of customer needs that might be effective for another set.

3. MAXIMIZE YOUR CURRENT BUSINESS – Where are the incremental “inside” opportunities?

We like to dive deep into a client’s operations and business, working with front-line staff and management to evaluate current products and services and, hopefully, identify new opportunities based on what is working well or not working at all.

4. FIND THE OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MARKET – Where are the “outside” opportunities?

The bulk of our market assessment engagements focuses on outside-in research based on these maps. We size the markets (and verticals within the markets) and then identify key players, potential competitors, partners, and other best-practice examples. We combine this research with survey and interview data from actual customers, prospective customers, and lapsed customers to give us a holistic view of the marketplaces.

5. CHOOSING YOUR BEST OPTIONS – How can we prioritize what we do next?

Once we have engaged with our client’s customers and staff and research the market ecosystem we build hypotheses as to where new opportunities lie. Each hypothesis is then passed through five filters:

• MARKET NEED – How strong is the need for this product or service in the marketplace? Is there a willingness to pay? Is anyone else delivering a similar product or service and, if so, what can your organization do to deliver it better?

• RIGHT TO PLAY – How closely does the proposed product or service fit into your brand? There may be a great opportunity but if no one would understand why your organization is providing it then it may not be the right opportunity for you.

• REVENUE POTENTIAL – What is the market size the opportunity addresses and what percentage of it can your organization reasonably expect to capture with the right product mix?

• MISSION ALIGNMENT – How well does this opportunity align with the evolving mission and vision of your organization?

• DIFFICULTY TO EXECUTE – Using rough people-power estimates (+/- 50%) how much time and resources would need to be dedicated to the delivery of this product or service? Can you do it alone or do you need partners to execute?

We engage with our clients (our goal is to innovate with our clients, not for them) in interactive workshops to run the hypotheses through the above filters and prioritize the ones that make the most sense. These opportunities tend to have the best mix of potential revenue, brand permission/ organizational mission, and ease of execution.

By following these five steps you can lead your company through a very useful exercise, utilizing  both inside-out and outside-in customer-centric thinking, while identifying opportunities, partners, competitors and more that can impact your business. Then comes the fun work of executing on these opportunities and making them into new businesses that can sustain a company’s growth!

TAKE A DIGITAL MATURITY EVALUATION

Social media, two words that were relatively non-existent 15 years ago, have now become a vital part of everyday business, so much so that entire campaigns are now focused around them. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are some of the top social channels used by businesses today.

Before your company dives deeper into social media, it’s important to remember what your company stands for and what you want to portray across each platform. Your brand, target audience, leadership team, company policies and imagery all play key parts in how you will be received on social media.

While each business and brand are different, the following tips can help you prepare as you dive headfirst into social media:

1. Identify your target audience. In the advertising and marketing world, knowing who to target is an integral part of any strategy and choosing the wrong demographic can be seriously detrimental to the success of your campaign.  There is a bit more flexibility when it comes to social targeting. Social media allows you to set up campaigns and target specific audiences, but pressing send on a social ad or paid campaign doesn’t mean you have to cross your fingers and hope it works. You can track the success of a campaign and alter the target audience based on how it is trending. Even with this flexibility, it is still important to identify your key audience early on, because knowing who to target will also help you with the next step – choosing the right platform.
2. Choose the right platform(s). While many businesses implement multiple platforms in their social media campaigns, not all platforms are the right fit for your brand. Each platform serves a different role and encompasses a different style of user. LinkedIn is primarily a business platform and is a great way for businesses and business professionals to reach out to other businesses, customers, employees and job seekers. Facebook and Twitter serve a more social role by incorporating more personal information, and Instagram and Pinterest focus more on sharing through images and captions. Thinking through who you want to target and how you want to portray your content will help you choose the right platform for your brand.
3.  Be unique to your brand. If you choose to implement multiple platforms in your quest for social supremacy, your brand needs to be equally identifiable in each platform. This goes for imagery as well as tone and the quality of content. Create a tone and voice that is unique to your brand. If you have multiple people in charge of creating and sharing content across your social sites, make sure everyone is in sync when it comes to the type of content and phrasing you want associated with your business.
4. Know the rules. Each platform has a different set of rules as to what is acceptable in terms of content and interactions. For instance, Facebook penalizes content that appears overly promotion or might be considered “click-bait.” Penalties like these could affect the placement and frequency of where your ad is shown. Familiarize yourself with each platform’s guidelines before making the decision to join.
   • Facebook
   • Twitter
   • LinkedIn
   • YouTube
   • Instagram 
5. Join the discussion. Post engaging content and ask questions to connect with your followers. Reply to comments on your posts and wall or newsfeed to keep the conversation going. By engaging with your followers, including working to resolve issues or problems, you help grow brand loyalty and encourage users to return to your page for updates. You can also use hashtags when appropriate to join larger conversations and organically put your content and brand in front of users who may not already be part of your following.
6. Have fun. This may be one of the most important aspects of social media. For most brands, success stems from storytelling more than product news. When appropriate, and only as it applies to your brand, have fun with your audience. Be inviting, make jokes and go with current trends in the marketplace. This can be tricky for brands that have a more professional tone and voice, but an occasional fun post can be refreshing to your followers. It’s okay if your brand doesn’t necessarily allow for you to share the funny cat video or meme currently trending on social media. You can still look for ways to make your content more engaging without losing the character of your brand. Know your audience and your brand and find the connection between them.